Sally plodded along steadily. She passed a pump dripping with water. June saw several fat sparrows before it, squabbling over the corn which had fallen from a horse’s nosebag. She went to chide them, as fairies do to birds in the country when their manners would bear mending; but these town sparrows, in their Cockney ignorance, never having seen a fairy, or dreamed there was anything in existence more important than themselves and perhaps some thin stray cat, pecked at her disrespectfully. As she paid no attention to their surliness, they took sudden panic and fled in a fright, chattering at one another in fine unanimous complaint. June resumed her perch, but now on Sally’s hat. She throned herself on its broken brim, and viewed London with exalted detachment. The squalor was left behind, but to fairy eyes the City was particularly dreary. The buildings withal so heavy, high and ambitious, wore looks of decay, and were stained with grime. The coarseness of the atmosphere, too, was oppressive. What a life! What a place! June could not resist wistfully thinking of that happier world where the flowers are free and soft winds kiss them. She deeply pitied the folk, who, voluntarily or not, were foolishly imprisoned in the stuffy stone-land. Sally turned down a court and threaded a series of alleys, bewildering to a stranger, till she came to an ill-painted door and rang a bell. She lowered her bundle gladly and sat on the step in a state of weakness and exhaustion. The powers within were dilatory or inattentive. She had to wait a good long while before the door was abruptly opened by a lantern-jawed youth, with red bristles on his upper lip, hair plastered with oil, and a paste diamond pin stuck in his yellow necktie. His associates knew him as Ernie Jenkins. "Why wasn’t you ’ere earlier?" he asked. "You’ll ’ave to wait now. Mr. Oldstein’s out and I’m busy. You seem to think you can come when you like. But you can’t. See? You can leave the goods inside and ’ook it for a time. Now remember, and look alive next week. See? Come back in three-quarters of an hour and get yer money." The door--the back-entrance to Mr. Emmanuel Oldstein’s wholesale tailoring emporium--was forthwith shut. Sally, meanwhile, must amuse herself as best she might. Again, with the patience of the starved, she sat on the step to wait, and sufficiently forget herself to think she would like to cry. However, she refrained from tears--the neglected have none to spare--and, as usual, centred her mind on things to eat. Food, food, food--there was her aspect of Eden. The object of her particular desire was again, as always, gravy, "’ot and smelly." June read her thoughts, and went to work to realize them. A school-boy was going by, whistling. He had been excused his lessons for the day and was cheerily hurrying to the Oval to see the year’s first cricket-match. A white-paper parcel, spelling lunch, was tucked under his arm.